Burntout- Techno Angst

4

Regret coursed though Techno's veins. He murmured a string of curse words to himself as he looked for bandages in the cabinet. He threw them down on the counter and started rinsing his affected arm in the sink. He felt an unimaginable guilt as he wondered what his friends would think if they saw him this way. He never intended to hurt anyone. He never even intended to hurt himself. Why did he always mess things up? Was it just in his nature?

Whatever the answer was, it probably wouldn't satisfy Techno. He decided not to think about it and finished up with his arm. Now he really needed a distraction.

He took a final glance at himself in the mirror and shrugged, heading over to his room. He started to set up stream, then paused. He didn't want people to see that anything was wrong with him. Would they see if he streamed now? Nevermind, he just needed to get through this and nobody would question him. Surely.

Techno started stream hastily and gave a short intro, deciding to just do a simple hypixel stream. Just something to keep his hands busy so he wouldn't worry too much during stream.

Immediately, chat started flaring up with lots of spam, and a few people asking where he'd been. It had been a while since he'd last streamed, hadn't it? Techno fought to urge to grimace st that thought, and busier himself with loading up hypixel.

...

By this point Techno had been streaming relatively normally for about half an hour, and he was beginning to get pretty tired. In between rounds, he glanced over chat for a few seconds, being greeted by chanting of  BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD. Over and over again. Techno forced a smirk and chuckle, then noticed a donation.

Glblggis $15: What's up with you lol you're acting funny

Techno froze, and glanced down at his arm. Of course, all the chat couldn't see anything, as his face cam was off, but in Techno's mind, they knew everything. The world started swirling. He knew he looked suspicious. He knew he needed to respond, but he was just... stuck?

After a few seconds of sitting there panicking, Techno realized he needed to end stream, now. Without another word, he ended stream and sat back, analyzing the situation. If they didn't know that something was wrong before, they definitely did now!

Techno whimpered and started violently kicking his legs around in a futile attempt to ground himself. Tears stung his eyes and his breathing became heavy and laboured. Then, he was startled back into reality by the chime of his computer. Someone was calling him. He didn't even take a moment to debate answering, and instead answered the call, not even seeing who it was.

"Techno?" Phil's voice rang out. Techno stayed silent, not really listening.

"Techno, what's going on? What's wrong?"

...

"Nothing..." Ironically, Techno's voice cracked right at the end. Perfect.

"I can hear you crying." Shit. "Please mate, talk to me. You can't bottle this up."

Techno sniffled. "Don't worry about me. I don't want to bother you."

"I promise you're not bothering me, and I'll never stop worrying about you. What's wrong, please?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay, you don't have to if you're not ready. Do you want to talk about something else? To calm you down?"

"No, just- just stay for a minute."

"Okay, I will."

And so they stayed on the call for the rest of the night, making brief conversation until Techno fell asleep.